Month: April 2018

Loyalty cards are becoming a staple of the modern shopping experience. That means companies that don’t include loyalty programs, discount cards, and other incentives for recurring shopping trips are likely to miss out on return customers. Many companies are starting to centralize their loyalty programs in an app, but that doesn’t mean they’re getting rid of their cards. Here are two reasons to make sure a physical card is part of your program:

Even in the digital age, things that can be held are valuable.

A strong tenet of selling products is letting customers hold and interact with the product. Once it’s in their hands, customers are much more willing to make the purchase. The same is just as true with loyalty program cards. While apps are convenient and can hold more interactive data, physical cards can be held. Making your cards attractive or a popular status symbol, like Starbuck’s gold card or the different tiers of platinum and gold credit cards, gives them extra value. That’s far more effective than an app that’s not on your customers’ home screen.

Familiar brands are preferred brands.

Not a single day goes by when consumers don’t open their wallets or grab their keys. If your loyalty card is tucked away or hooked onto a keychain, that means your target market of core customers, people who have already made purchases at your stores, see your brand every single day. That constant reminder on the periphery of their day makes your brand familiar and comfortable.

It also encourages new leads to find your store. If a customer is visibly carrying your loyalty program card on their keychain, then their family, friends, and acquaintances will see it. Even if it never comes up, that implicit stamp of approval from a trusted source will go a long way in their eyes.

Every marketing strategy your business employs requires insight and data analysis. It’s hard to understand what drives consumer behavior without knowing the consumers. If you can’t track spending and customer behavior, then you have to wait and hope for sales instead of driving sales. But if your company offers consumable products and services that are popular for gifts, you have another layer of consumer obscurity to penetrate because you’re dealing with two very different customer personas.

What are your two customer types?

Customer personas are an important organization concept in marketing. A customer persona is the ‘type’ of person who buys your products and services, or even a specific product or service, and that persona is based on the average demographic and behavior data you collect. If gift cards are part of your product offering, then you have two different types:

direct customers who like your products and services, and

gift-givers, who have one of your direct customers in their life.

These two buyer types, even though they’re too generic to be specific customer personas, have very different motivations. That means they need very different marketing tracks and incentives.

How do online gift cards help?

Gift cards provide a whole new set of data to help you make your marketing campaigns effective, and online gift cards are even more efficient. Each gift card has a unique code that lets you track everything from the number of gift cards purchased in given time frames to the amount on the average gift card each month. Even more importantly, the codes let you track the duration of time between the gift card purchase and the direct customer’s use of the gift card, as well as what purchases people are more likely to make with a gift card over cash.

From that last data set, you can start to find valuable trends. Direct customers who receive cards may be more likely to make larger, premium purchases because of the implicit difference between cards and cash. Gift cards purchased for a birthday might be spent faster than those purchased for Christmas. No matter what trends are unique to your company, you can plan your product offerings and sales accordingly to get quick turnaround on card usage.

Brick and Mortar stores are taking a hit all because of e-commerce. Just look at Toys “R” Us and Babies “R” Us. These two were giants in their respective fields for over 60 years. Kmart which began in 1899 has liquidated and closed as well.

The question is, if they had instituted a healthy e-commerce processing program, could they have sustained a longer run and still be in business? The answer is probably yes. They could have streamlined their overhead, lowered prices and been competitive in their respective fields. People say it is Amazon’s fault these stores collapsed. Amazon just provided, (in some cases), better prices and the ease of purchasing items from home.

E-commerce is a viable entity and it’s here to stay. Every business that sells anything should have an e-commerce platform.

Why People Love to Shop Online

Shop from home or office

Avoid crowds or going to the mall

Convenience, done with just a few button clicks

Better Variety

Better Prices

People are ridiculously busy, they mean to get to the store to purchase mom’s birthday gift, but finding the time is not easy. The kids must be toted to practice and games. Perhaps it’s business meetings, family and friends get-togethers, or working late and being too exhausted to stop by the store. Let’s try this, the store is closed, or it’s late and that parking lot can be sketchy at night. Having an e-commerce platform set up by BAMS can keep loyal customers coming back without having to set foot in the store. E-commerce can attract new customers who would never have visited your location. They may live 50, 500 or 5000 miles away.

Here is a likely scenario; a child wants a pair of cowboy boots. The parent has no idea about such things, they live in New England where cowboys are not the norm. Said parent googles cowboy boots for sale, checks out a couple sites, decides what to spend, and orders them from Texas. The child is happy, the parent is happy, the person who does not know they have reason to be unhappy is the Western Wear business owner in town without an e-commerce site.

Contact BAMS to discuss setting up your e-commerce processing platform to help your business grow.

Gift cards have only been around about 20 years. Before that, is was paper gift certificates and not many of them, as the giver preferred a more “personal touch,” meaning that actually going to the store and purchasing the gift was not only more labor intensive but more “thoughtful.” As more establishments began offering gift cards, the variety was embraced by the general public and they took off fast and hard. At this time every store, restaurant and sub shop we enter has their own gift cards to purchase, and many sell a multitude of others. We, the public, have determined that gift cards are good, but of course the less scrupulous among us have found ways to defraud consumers and those same stores, restaurants, etcetera. BAMS can help you get setup to begin selling gift cards immediately.

The latest gift card trend is purchasing them online. You buy it, get sent a secure 16 digit number and a pin code that you pass along to whomever you choose. Many businesses can send the virtual gift card to the email you provided. Once it has been purchased, the buyer is completely out of the loop. The gift is given, the buyer is happy as is the gift card recipient.

Reasons why purchasing gift cards online is smarter:

Security – The transaction takes place in private, no plastic cards hanging on a rack that may have been compromised.

Spending – People spend more when using gift cards online. Overspending is normal since people can look at more than just discounted and clearance items, after all, it’s not their own hard earned money that’s being used. These wish list items can be bought and adding an extra $20.00 or $50.00 is okay since the recipient getting something they normally would not want to entirely pay for themselves.

Convenience – The birthday, holiday, or other has a deadline of tomorrow. Buying a gift and sending it is out of the question, it will not get there in time. An online gift card will, and it be very well received.

Online gift cards are a great idea, the color is always right, it’s just the size of the amount that needs consideration. Contact us so that BAMS can explain more about online gift cards.